Venus and Cupid

Born in Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi, the eldest child of Orazio, became one of the great artists of the seventeenth century. Recognised in her lifetime for her abundant talent, her reputation, over the course of more recent decades, as one of the most expressive and powerful woman painters of any era has been consolidated.
She trained with her father, becoming his close assistant in her formative years. He soon recognised her outstanding promise, writing to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Maria Maddalena of Austria, in July 1612, that: ‘having studied the profession of painting, after three years she had practised so much that I can now say that she has no peers, having created such works of art that perhaps even the most important masters of this profession cannot achieve…’ (‘havendola drizzata nella professione di pittura, in tre anni si è talmente appraticata, che posso ardire de dire che hoggi non ci sia pare a lei, havendo per sin adesso fatte opere, che forse principali mastri di questa professione non arrivano al suo sapere…’ ). This letter was written at the time of the notorious trial of Agostino Tassi for the rape of Artemisia the previous year, when she was seventeen. In November 1612, Tassi was convicted and banished from Rome for five years. To minimise the scandal which the trial had engendered, Orazio arranged for Artemisia to marry the Florentine painter, Pierantonio Stiattesi, just two days after the trial ended. Shortly thereafter, the couple moved to Florence, where they would live until 1620, and Artemisia would become an independent artist, enjoying prodigious professional success in the Tuscan capital, patronised by Grand Duke Cosimo II de' Medici and the Grand Duchess Cristina, in so doing becoming the first female painter to be accepted as a member of the Accademia del Disegno. Her subsequent career saw her then move back to Rome, travel to Venice and spend the final decades of her life in Naples, save for a stay in England. This itinerant path brought about stylistic changes along the way: she initially embraced Caravaggesque tendencies, having undoubtedly been witness to her father’s great admiration for Caravaggio, an artist who had a profound and pivotal effect on the direction of Orazio’s career, before adapting and developing her great sense of naturalism, as she responded to and absorbed diverse influences in different cities.
Artemisia’s oeuvre is replete with compositions that show heroic female figures and her mastery of the nude resonates throughout her career. The role of her predecessor Lavinia Fontana in this regard has been seen as decisive, with her depictions of female nudes – notably Venus and Minerva – paving the way for Artemisia’s extraordinarily expressive capabilities, one pioneer following another. No doubt this was also driven by a sensitivity towards, and a response to, the changing tastes of her patrons; she was ‘uncommonly attuned to the prevailing tastes in the cities in which she worked’ (K. Christiansen, ‘Becoming Artemisia: Afterthoughts on the Gentileschi Exhibition’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, XXXIX, 2004, p. 112). The superbly drawn figure of Venus in this painting shows a commanding understanding of the female form, with her wonderfully outstretched leg, in a pose that is at once provocative and restrained, statuesque yet true-to-life. In her physiognomy she closely recalls other nudes in Artemisia’s corpus, such as the seated Bathsheba in David and Bathsheba (Ohio, Columbus Museum of Art) or the renowned Danaë (Saint Louis Museum of Art). More direct parallels can also of course be drawn with the Venus and Cupid (fig. 1; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts), especially in the wonderfully sculpted form of the legs. The way in which the white sheets fold around the mattress recall the crisp draperies that are so characteristic of her father, not least in his great masterpiece Danaë and the Shower of Gold (Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum).
The picture’s conservation history is worth noting. When it was first examined by Herman Voss he noticed that later overpaint, in the form of drapery, had been added to the shoulder, torso and leg of Venus; at his suggestion the then owner had the overpaint removed, to reveal the original composition beneath (see Voss, op. cit.). When the work was last seen in public in 2002, it had only been partially restored which made full consideration of its qualities more challenging; its recent conservation treatment has markedly improved its appearance.
There have been differing views on its dating. Bissell and Schleier (op. cit.) date it to the 1630s, whilst Keith Christiansen, to whom we are grateful, suggests an earlier dating of circa 1620, upon her return to Rome, reflecting the echoes of Florentine influence that feel present in the canvas.
Whilst the picture’s early history and the circumstances of its commission are not certain, it is possible that it is the work by Artemisia listed in the 1644 inventory of Cardinal Antonio Barberini (‘Un quadro con una donna con un'amore senza cornice coperta con suo tafetta verse della Gentilesca’). A nephew of Pope Urban VIII, his collection included great masterpieces of the time, including Caravaggio’s Cardsharps and The Lute Player. The canvas then found its way to England, and was probably owned by the poet and satirist Matthew Prior before being acquired in the eighteenth century by his friend Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and was a Member of Parliament for Radnor and Cambridgeshire, before succeeding his father as 2nd Earl in May 1724. On marrying the heiress Henrietta Cavendish (1694-1755), only daughter of John Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne, he inherited Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, and later, in 1716, inherited Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire from his mother-in-law, Duchess of Newcastle. He formed a very substantial collection of pictures as well as a celebrated library.